Since the release of the 3800 series last year, we've been
waiting for AMD to introduce both the lower and upper end of their product
line. The Radeon HD 3870 and HD 3850 are good values, and today we see the low
end of the market get a much needed update. We still have to wait a short while
to talk about new high end hardware, but hopefully AMD will be able to pull out
something that puts them back in competition there.

While the lack of attention to the high end from AMD might
not impact most graphics hardware buyers directly, the high end market does
represent high margins and the battle between NVIDIA and AMD for leadership can
be quite entertaining to watch at times. On top of that, high end hardware
enables engine developers to test techniques and ideas on what will inevitably
be future low end hardware. We really hope AMD gets back in the game soon for
the sake of advancing the industry.

For now, we don't have low end hardware so we can't do any
performance comparisons right now. AMD has promised a very hard launch, so the
delay between now and when we will see a performance review should be
relatively short. In the meantime we'll take a look at the hardware specs and
new technologies that are part of the 3600 and 3400 series parts.